Dad gets up and tries to pull me off of the tweebs, but he’s laughing too hard to keep a hold of me. Coop succeeds wherehe fails. “Why are you mad? This is the best gift I’ve ever been given.”
“I hate all of you. I’m running away from home.”
“Don’t go, Lee!” Logan says through his stupid streaming laugh-tears.
“We love you!” Lucas says, clutching his stomach.
I punch the Coop cutout in the face before the real Coop can stop me, and that only makes everyone laugh harder.
Including me.
“I guess you really did get everything you wanted for Christmas,” Coop says.
“I hate you.”
“Nope. I have proof. You love me,” he says, folding me in his arms and rocking us back and forth. “Or you will soon enough.”
The cockiness on this guy!
Dad sets Bear down and starts picking up wrapping paper and putting it into a large black garbage bag, and the rest of us quickly chip in. When Coop tosses his wrapping paper in the bag, I hear my dad ask, “What does your family do Christmas morning?”
“We watch Christmas movies while we do a gingerbread house competition every year.”
“That sounds fun. I’m sorry we don’t have any kits.”
“They definitely donotuse kits. Am I right?” I say to Coop.
He nods, a wistful smile on his face. “We homemake the gingerbread.”
Dad slaps him on the back and Coop falls forward. “All right! Looks like we have a new tradition, kids! Coop, show us how it’s done.”
I watch as my dad takes Coop into the kitchen and my brothers follow. My heart thumps in time with their steps. But there’s an ache there, too, and this time it’s not because I miss my mom. It’s because I know how much Coop misses his.
My family has rallied around him. They’re not just accommodating him, they’re making him feel at home. That can’t change the fact that it’s nothishome, though. And the song is exactly right: there really is no place like home for the holidays.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LIESEL
We’re piping frosting on our houses when I get a text from Kayla Carville.
Kayla
Liesel! Your brothers are about to get a phone call that I hope makes you all very happy! Merry Christmas!
I adore Kayla. She can’t know that the idea of my brothers being traded to another Triple-A team is a gut punch of epic proportions. They were about to be put on the extended roster for one of the top teams in baseball.My team!They were practically guaranteed a shot in the Majors this year.
Now, it’s all out of my control.
As much as I thought I was tired of worrying about their fates, I realize now that I’d be sad to see them anywhere else but with me.
Coop nudges me with his foot, and I show him the text while my dad and brothers work on their gingerbread houses. His tight-lipped smile shows more than sympathy. I get the feeling this hurts him, too.
A minute or two later, my brothers get the call from their agent.
Who makes deals on Christmas Day, for Santa’s sake? Sports agents, that’s who.
Logan frowns at the phone, but Lucas’s eyes light up. He answers and switches it to speaker as the two walk through the dining room and down the hall to Dad’s office.
